.bli

biological & Product design, film-making, graphic design, branding.

🛠: Illustrator, After Effects, Biology, ✍️, 📸, 🧠
💁‍♂️: Rhea Goenka - Biochemist & Artist
👀: Esther Klein Gallery
⌛: 6 weeks

BIOCHEMICAL DEMOCRATIZATION

What happens when everyone has ubiquitous access to a chemical factory run on agar and L broth?

.bli (“bl-EEH”) sought to pose this question. We simplified a heat shock protocol, which allowed basic gene editing of bacteria, so it could be done with our simple kit in the comfort of your home.

Microorganisms produce complex chemicals significantly more accurately and quickly than any current nano-fabrication facility. What if happens if these machines could work on any assembly line of someone’s choosing? What if I could not just make perfumes, colognes and coconut oil, but hormones, illicit drugs or bio-weapons? These are questions that need to be thought about preemptively.

Along with our kit, we created a form factor using slap bracelets for trading plasmids (your .bli) on dehydrated filter paper. Our narrative ran: one would wake up, plan their day as they do, print their plasmids using a “DNA printer”, dissolved and dehydrated the filter paper in it and brought it around on their day.

If you and I are at a bar, and I love your cologne, I can ask you for a copy of your .bli, take the plasmid home and execute the transformation on the bacteria to grow some myself.

FORM FACTOR SELECTION

The kitification of biology is increasingly widespread. Our choice to use a kit comes is partly influenced by this, but a greater design choice came from both of our love of music and belief that technology plays the natural tones of science.

We took inspiration from vinyl turntables and vinyl records - our .blis carry the information needed, but they can only be played with our kit.